“This is not normal,” said Mrs. Obama, her voice shaking with emotion. “No woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

Having just hosted the International Day of the Girl — her last event in the White House — and meeting with young women from Saudi Arabia and around the world, Mrs. Obama observed that “it has been a week of profound contrasts.”

“Many of these girls have faced unthinkable obstacles just to attend school, jeopardizing their personal safety, their freedom, risking the rejection of their families and communities. So I thought it would be important to remind these young women how valuable and precious they are. I wanted them to understand that the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls.”

After detailing the systematic denial of basic rights of women in Saudi Arabia, the First Lady went on to describe the country’s dismal record on human rights more generally. Highlighting the death sentence of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a protestor who was arrested at the age of 17, Mrs. Obama noted that her speech was taking place on the one-year anniversary of al-Nimr’s mother begging President Barack Obama to save her son from crucifixion.

Commentators have noted that Mrs. Obama’s speech is particularly brave in light of the steadfast and vital support of the Saudi regime by both President Obama and the Clintons, and coming just weeks after Congress voted to override the president’s veto of a bill allowing 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia. President Obama has personally approved the biggest arms sale in US history — worth $60 billion — to the Saudi regime, and his State Department “welcomed” Saudi Arabia to head the UN Human Rights Council.

But as the First Lady put it herself: “I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted. So while I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous of me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.”